


Rings and Dirtied Hands

by Katalyna_Rose



Series: Kahlia Mahariel [22]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Marriage Proposal, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 04:34:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11456106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katalyna_Rose/pseuds/Katalyna_Rose
Summary: "For DWC: some zev/mahariel and dirtied hands is your prompt! Please and thank you! " from @bearlytolerable on tumblr!





	Rings and Dirtied Hands

Kahlia always seemed convinced that her hands were dirty. She was somewhat obsessed with hygiene in general, but it seemed to be her hands that bothered her the most. On dark nights when she shook the bed with tremors of silent fear, Zevran couldn’t help but wonder what had been on her hands.

Her hands were often raw from all her scrubbing, but he didn’t know how to help with this. He could calm her shakes, bring her back into the present during a flashback, reaffirm that she was loved and cared for, assure her that he adored her no matter what she’d been through. She trusted him, allowed him to ease her, was beginning to relearn his body and how hers could react to it with pleasure. But in this, he was helpless, lost.

She had too many blisters from the hilts of her daggers because she scrubbed away all her callouses in her obsessive need to have clean hands. But the blisters were scrubbed away, too. Her hands began to bleed.

“Enough, Kahlia!” he finally cried when he found her scrubbing again, the water in the basin thick and red with blood. She was hurting herself and he couldn’t let it continue. He grabbed her wrists despite her flinch and pulled her away from the water, taking the cloth she used the scrub away from her.

“I do not know how to help you in this, mi amor,” Zevran lamented as he bade her to sit and rummaged around their tiny apartment to gather healing salve and bandages. “You are hurting yourself and I do not understand.”

“My hands are dirty,” she murmured, voice flat, and he looked up at her from setting down his burden beside her. Her eyes, always nearly empty, were endless voids of nothing, a vacuum where her passion should be. She was having another episode. He sighed heavily.

“Your hands are bleeding, mi amor,” he told her calmly, wondering what would bring her back to him.

“Yes,” she murmured. “Their blood is all over me, always. I scream in the dark and it only burns more.” A fine shiver traveled up her body from her toes to the crown of her head. Zevran swallowed hard.

“Kahlia, you are in Antiva,” he told her. She blinked once. He took one of her hands with gentle fingers and she allowed it passively. He hated that; his Kahlia was only ever passive when her mind was in the past, in her trauma. She wasn’t meant to be passive; she was fiery and fierce and protective of everyone she cared about, including herself. He hated that she’d almost been broken.

But what he felt wasn’t important in this moment. He swallowed back the rage he felt on her behalf, knowing that she would pick up on the tiniest inflection, the smallest gesture, and if he was angry then she would be afraid. He could only be calm and serene for her in these moments. He focused on her hair, curling wildly around her head. She always used to keep it tied back so tightly that he hadn’t even known it was curly. The first time he’d seen it loose was the first time he’d made love to her. He’d adored her hair ever since and he adored that she no longer bothered to contain it. He focused on the way her hair made him feel and that allowed him to keep calm for her, to be what she needed.

“Kahlia, mi amor, you are at home,” Zevran continued, carefully spreading the healing salve on her hands, wiping away the blood that still dripped from the many wounds she’d given herself. “I went to the market today while you were resting in the afternoon. I bought you some flowers. They’re in the vase just to the right of your elbow. Do you see them?” Her eyes moved toward the flowers, her favorite orange day lilies, but no recognition flared yet. “I also brought back fish that I will cook in a few minutes. Perhaps I will season it with the herbs you’ve been growing in a box under the window? Are the plants old enough yet to take cuttings from them?” She blinked a few times, then frowned slightly. He smiled just slightly to himself as he tied off the bandage on her right hand and carefully picked up her left. “I also have a surprise for you. Perhaps you do not remember, but today is the anniversary of my failed attempt to assassinate you. I am not certain why I have always remembered the date of it, yet I do. It was a turning point in my life, after all. It was the day I realized that life is worth living. It was the day we met. It may even have been the day I fell in love with you, if you believe in such ridiculous fairy tales as love at first sight. Yet, at the very least, I felt connected to you at first sight. After all, as I told you once, I thought that you were Andraste come to guide me to the Maker when I saw your eyes.” He tied off the second bandage and laid her hand gently in her lap. He’d been careful to make certain she had full mobility despite the bandages, but she wouldn’t be able to hurt herself more as long as they were in place.

“Connection…” she said musingly, her eyes finally registering the flowers he’d bought for her. Then she blinked and frowned and fixed her gaze on his hands as he wiped the last of the healing salve off them. “Zevran?” she asked, voice tiny. He smiled for her.

“Si, mi amor,” he said gently. “Come home to me.” Her eyes rose to his and she held his gaze and he knew she was back. Not all the way, perhaps, but cognitively she was home.

“Welcome home,” she said with the tiniest of smiles. She said that to let him know that she remembered where she was and she would be alright.

“Indeed, I am home,” he told her, still smiling. “Anywhere you are is home to me, amor, no matter how dark it may seem.”

“Is it really the anniversary?” she asked, voice gaining volume and confidence. He grinned.

“It is. And I really do have a gift for you.”

“What is it?” She never could resist a present and he laughed heartily just to provoke that tiny smile on her perfect lips once more.

“Ah, mi amor, I hope you will like it,” he said, still grinning though his belly clenched with nerves. In truth, he had been debating it for a very long time and he had no idea how she’d react. He’d been eyeing it at the shop for so long that the shop keeper had suggested last week that he simply have sex with it and get it over with. Finally, he’d realized that he needed to get it for her, even if she hated it, even if she insisted he get rid of it. He needed to get this for her. For them.

He put away the bandages and healing salve in their usual place, then went to his side of their bed and opened the drawer in his nightstand. It had a false bottom, as did hers, and they both respected the other’s privacy in the false bottoms and hidden compartments of their respective furniture, though they would sometimes rummage through each other’s things when asked to locate something or when bored. He slipped her gift from the drawer into his pocket and approached her. She was still seated and he knelt before her. She looked at him curiously, eyeing his empty hands with vague disappointment. But he wouldn’t reveal his gift until he was ready.

“Kahlia, my love, we have been through much together and apart,” he began, still smiling for her. “We both have our demons in our minds. Yet you have always made me a better person, from the very moment we met. And I spent seven years believing you were dead. And when you came back to me…” He trailed off, shaking his head helplessly. “Not many can say that they have been blessed with a second chance like that.” He looked up and met her eyes and she held them fearlessly, fully herself once more. He grinned. “I would prefer not to waste what I have been given,” he told her softly, calmly, his gut clenching in fear. He drew her present out of his pocket and opened the little box and watched her face grow slack with shock, her perfect mouth dropping open as she beheld the diamond ring he presented to her. It was simple, a single round, uncut diamond set in silverite, only a little decoration in the way the metal curled around the gem. It was unrefined and completely gorgeous, just like Kahlia herself. “In the spirit of not wasting my blessings, I would like to ask you to…” He stopped, his throat clenching in fear. He coughed and tried again. “Kahlia, mi amor, would you…” He couldn’t ask, his throat closing and refusing to let the words past his tongue.

Kahlia stared at the ring and shock was the only emotion he could read from her. He didn’t know if she was pleased or dismayed. He didn’t know if she liked it. Then her eyes met his and he saw the moisture there. “Ask,” she breathed, and he found the strength to draw breath.

“Kahlia, my love, mi amor, will you marry me?” he finally managed to whisper.

And she smiled. It wasn’t the way she smiled before, loud and large and completely unrestrained, but it was real and it was her and he loved it. She put her bandaged hand on his cheek and he leaned into it, looking up at her desperately.

“My hands are dirty,” she said again, but it wasn’t because she was lost.

“My hands are not clean, either, preciosa,” he murmured. She bit her lip.

“Yes,” she breathed. Then she smiled again, a tear dripping down her cheek. “Yes, Zevran, I will marry you.” And he cried out in joy. She wrapped her arms around his neck and slid to the floor to fold herself into his embrace.

The ring would not fit over the bandages on her hands, but she vowed to him not to let it get so bad again. And when her hands were healed and he slipped the ring on her finger as they said their vows, it fit her so perfectly that he cried. She cried too, and she cradled her hand against her chest over her heart. And never again did she scrub her hands until they bled because she had that ring to remind her that, dirty or not, she was loved.


End file.
